Understanding My Father

A lot of my past trauma has been resurfacing ever since I decided to move to California.

The other day, I saw a little girl and her dad playing tennis together. He was coaching her, doing drills, and teaching her how to bend her knees as she swung the racket. I thought to myself, “this reminds me of me and my dad.”

I smiled, and moved on with practicing my own serves, but this time deep in my thoughts. With each serve, I swung harder. I ignored the loud chit-chat from players on the court next to me, consumed by an increasing sense of internal frustration, realizing that seeing this girl and her dad playing had triggered some strong emotion in my chest.

Right now, I’m getting back into tennis myself - playing 4 days a week, working hard in my lessons. I gave up tennis when I was a kid because he pushed me too hard and I thought I’d never correct the flaws in my game that I felt insecure about - as if inconsistencies with muscle memory were directly tied to my character flaws.

But now I am growing in that area. It’s a joy to play tennis again and rediscover this part of me, even though I’ll probably never be really good, and the time to think about “doing something with it” like he wanted me to - playing on the high school team, playing in college, etc. - ended over a decade and a half ago. I’m just having fun with it, though - trying to learn enough to play social tennis, as a way to meet friends, get a good workout, and have an outlet for my competitive spirit.

I realized that I’d just unlocked a truth about my mom and dad’s style of parenting. They probably thought to themselves that it would be cool if their child excelled in their hobbies and became as excellent as they were. But their true goal was to give their child the desire to pursue their personal passions. A lifetime of pursuing your passions and experiencing personal growth to achieve your goals is more valuable than giving your parents bragging rights over a slightly improved college resume. They told me all this at the time - but I didn’t realize how true it was.

But then I grew resentful. You see, my dad’s in a wheelchair - he will never walk again, let alone play tennis again. He won’t be able to play me and have that unique observation point of how I’ve improved directly. He won’t notice that I’ve finally embraced proper form on my swings, and I’m consistent enough that I can hold long rallies where me and my opponent will strike the ball 20 times each before the point is over. He won’t marvel at the fact that it’s taken me only 6 lessons to improve this much.

And he has brain damage, anyway. He could still show up to watch me play, and sit next to the court in his wheelchair. He could still smile as I chase the ball down and hit a winner that lands on the corner of the baseline and the left single’s sideline, far beyond my opponent’s reach. He could even high five me as I beat my opponent, earning my win in a game between friends that is meaningless to the rest of the world but a simple, joyful experience for me. He won’t walk back to the car, laughing about the game, briefly smiling in silence as he opens the car door, wanting to soak in that moment of fatherhood that he didn’t think he’d experience years after I moved out of the house and started a life of my own. He won’t realize to himself that this is a personal growth experience for me. And I won’t leave my hometown for good knowing that I got to re-live these good times with my dad as an adult, this time in a completely new way.

The truth is, the privilege of having my father get to know me as an adult was taken from me when he had his accident. My dad had his accident a month after I graduated college, and 2 days before I started my first “big boy” job. He never got to see me become an expert in my field, buy my first house, get my heart broken, and emerge from a dying 5-year relationship to ultimately become a better version of myself. The dad that I knew as a kid will never REALLY see me pursue both new and long-lost passions, chase my dreams, or move across the country. I just wish that I could communicate this with my father. I wish I could have played with him again. I could bring it up with him in conversation anyway, but it wouldn’t have the same impact on our relationship that it would have if he hadn’t had his accident. Because while I might ignore it, he is intellectually and emotionally at half-capacity compared to how he was pre-accident.

My personal growth will not register with the person that I knew - it would only be recognized by about half of his old self. It’s almost like his old self is gone.

How would I deal with him being gone? Well, based on how I dealt with Michael’s death, I would initially think about how short life is, feel a desire to pull away from my responsibilities in an attempt to make the most of my life. But I would want to find that happy medium that I didn’t find after Michael’s death. I would want to grow in ways that I failed to after Michael died. Back then, I took it to an extreme, and lost some of my enthusiasm for life - falling into a rut, and losing the passion for new experiences that I previously had as a young adult.

I would hope that if he died, I’d solidify a realization that I had just now - that the best way to honor the man that I knew is not to abandon my responsibilities, but to chase my dreams. It’s okay if I have to work a little over here, as long as if I balance it out by enjoying myself more over there. I can’t wait until it’s too late, living in the future, counting down until my retirement when I can finally enjoy myself - which is how he lived before his accident. He’s not a bad person - far from it - but for years, he was a workaholic who prioritized his job over his family. I don’t have to be the way that he was.

If I die before I’m an old man, or have an accident that robs my loved ones of my entire self, I hope that I’d go out knowing that I was living the best life I could, for whatever stage I was at in life. And I feel like I’m finally doing that now - experiencing personal growth, and leaving my old life behind for a new life in California - because that is where I am supposed to be, and what I am supposed to do. I just know it.

While my dad’s accident did rob me of some experiences with him, I am grateful that it didn’t rob me of the ability to learn these kinds of life lessons.

In a way, I’m also honoring the person that he was by learning from his mistakes.

As I was leaving the tennis court, the little girl’s mother walked on. As we passed each other, I said, “that’s really cute, seeing them play - it reminds me of me and my dad.” She turned around, chuckled, and completed my thought for me. She said, “Yep. As we get older, we finally get to understand our parents.”